How To Explore Your Experiences and Develop Your Stories

You likely have some great experiences and stories that illustrate tremendous lessons for audiences. However, you’ve likely discounted the value of some of your experiences. I often have.  I’ll offer an example, and how I then brought the story to life, and how you can do similar.

My Example - Las Vegas – Stratosphere – Team Building   

A few years ago, I discovered a video I had saved and then forgotten. When I reexperienced the video, I realized it illustrates a very good story, with a good lesson.

In 2015, I was one of several people at a team-building event in Las Vegas where we all jumped from the 829-foot tower at the Stratosphere Hotel. Our event was designed as a team-building experience for senior elected leaders of Toastmasters International. Prior to our business meetings, we would sometimes plan a team-building event. Prior to these meetings, the team members would arrive from various parts of the world, and before conducting business, we’d do something relaxing and fun together. When it was my choice, I took the team curling in Connecticut.  Nothing too scary.

Team building events are valuable.  People get to know one another more casually, and sometimes learn how others respond under stress or performance expectations. For example, one common team-building exercise requires teams to use tools like popsicle sticks, pens and pencils to build the tallest tower possible. That’s a good test of ingenuity.  Another requires teams to rank the most prestigious jobs, or sequence the most valuable items to have when you’re lost at sea. These are good tests of listening and the ability to negotiate decisions.

I wasn’t enamoured with the jump as a team activity. As I saw it, we would individually jump from the tower, taking our turn among dozens of other paying customers.  As we waited, I was quite impatient watching various other customers, when I would glance up to see someone just standing on the platform, not jumping, and holding up production. Apparently, they were unaware of the work I had to complete later that day. I silently stared and encouraged them with “just jump and get this over with.” Not out loud, of course.  (Perhaps there is some team-building lesson in my behavior that day)

Then my turn came. Quickly I felt the anxiety. Here is the video https://youtu.be/E7U64OV0iVU

 

A Realization Years Later

I completed the jump that day, as did the other members of our team. We all purchased the commemorative videos recorded by cameras strapped to our wrists. I saved my video as provided in the link.

And that was that. The jump was completed and I let the video sit, ignoring it, until one day YouTube presented it to me in their list of suggested videos.  When I watched it again, I realized the 90-second video illustrates very well a concept I present when training on leadership. The core concept is from Situational Leadership by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard.

A core concept in situational leadership is assessing a follower’s “task maturity,” that is, the follower’s experience with the specific task. Not general maturity, not overall maturity, not any history of achievement or success, but specific task maturity.

When there is little task maturity, the leader should tell the team member what to do. That’s not disrespectful, that’s early-stage development of a team member.

Unsurprisingly, I had zero experience jumping from a tall tower, and needed clear instructions on what precisely to do. I had zero task maturity. Also I was nervous.

In the video, I don’t believe I show many signs of nervousness, but there are some signs.  For example, my short answers of compliance with a brief “k.” I fail to execute simple instructions such as putting both hands on the left rail.  Pretty simple.  I needed to be told twice. I was nervous.

The attendant was managing her business, safety, and throughput, but also instructing a nervous newbie on how to succeed in his jump. And as you can see, I did.

Situational leadership provides a model for assessing task maturity, and behaving appropriately as a leader.  The video shows the behavior of a leader telling a newbie precisely what to do, and the newbie nervously completing this type of task for the first time in his life.

Lesson for Story Tellers

The broader lesson here, aside from situational leadership, and which I’ve amplified in some recent presentations, is that we all have stories that we believe are not significant, or that we simply ignore. However, there is often significance should we probe a little deeper. I had forgotten my Stratosphere experience, and rediscovered that it had good value.

How To Mine Your Experiences and Develop Your Stories

1.    Anytime you talk with a friend or colleague about an experience with any degree of passion, make a note in your phone or a booklet. Often, you’ll start these stories with “this reminds of me of the time …”

2.    When you note the story, note the lessons too.  In my example the lessons are situational leadership, recognizing nervous behavior, assessing task maturity, managing safety, and likely some others.

3.    Tell the story and test it with a friend or colleague. They may see additional value or lessons, and will ask questions that will add clarity to your re-telling.

4.    Add drama and embellish.  Keep your story largely true but, in a speech, you tell a story to make a point.  Make it memorable. 

 

Your Stories

You might be discounting the value of some of your experiences. I encourage you to mine your experiences for great stories and illustrative lessons. 

Managing Q&A Sessions and “Bad” Questions

Late last year I wrote about serving as a judge at an MBA competition and made some observations about the performance of the groups, and generally about professional presentation habits.  Here is a link to that post should you wish to see it https://gycz.blogspot.com/2022/12/nervous-energy-and-dancing-during.html

In this previous post, I commented on the management of questions and answers by the groups. While I thought this was a relatively minor point in the post, I received some follow-up comments regarding this.   

During the event, teams of students delivered individual presentations, and then the teams were required to take questions from a panel of judges from the business community.  I noted that in most professional situations someone skilled should field each question initially and either answer the question, or invite a specific team member to address the question.  Someone skilled should manage and control the Q&A session.

At the competition any student on the presenting team was able to jump in and answer, sometimes exposing the line of questioning to a new area. This is not a huge issue during student presentations, but in a professional environment could perhaps expose an area the larger team would prefer not to discuss.  Or perhaps a participant not fully developed professionally manages the question poorly. I’ll offer an example.

“Why Would You Want To Do That?”

In the late 1980s, I worked in information technology holding a variety of positions over a ten-year period. One day, we were pitched some software that wrote new software after the programmers provided a few variables.  I’ve seen other variations of such software in more recent years, but I’ve never seen any version that truly worked well.  But perhaps the industry has evolved, perhaps Artificial Intelligence will finally deliver on this long-promised capability.

On the day we were pitched this product, the salesperson brought along a product demo expert, a technical expert, to demonstrate the application and answer any technical questions. Their well-rehearsed product demo went swimmingly, and a few questions were asked and fielded well.

Then a human resources manager in attendance asked if the product could be developed by the product, that is, could the software actually write itself.   That’s an intellectually curious question. I was early in my career and had some rough edges professionally, but I did appreciate the beauty of the question, although I thought it was a bit odd.  I didn’t state that of course.  But the product demo guy did.  He said “that’s a dumb question, why would you want to do that?”

Then, the sales professional jumped in to try to salvage the sale, but at that point, the demonstration and potential sale was over except for professional niceties. The sales pitch failed.

Experience Must Manage and Control

The point of this story is to illustrate that in most situations, someone skilled should take control of the Q&A session, to answer the questions, or to frame any response, and only invite other team members to comment if required.

In my story, if the sales professional had quickly acknowledged the question, commented that it was an unconventional thought, and managed the question to completion, a sale might have been possible. 

Elements of Public Speaking

There are many elements in public speaking. Team presentations introduce another layer of complexity. There is no replacement for experience in managing presentations professionally.

Imagining Conflict When None Exists

Managing perceived conflict is a key skill for professionals.  People need to be comfortable assessing the presence of conflict and managing it if it is present. However, sometimes we manufacture conflict or imagine that it is present. There is a simple test you can perform to assess if conflict exists between you and someone else.  It’s simple, but intimidating. I wrote about that test in this blog post https://gycz.blogspot.com/2022/02/dealing-with-team-conflict-real-and.html

Conflict: Real or Imagined

One of the most damaging aspects of conflict is believing conflict exists, but not confirming it. During this time, those involved can actually manufacture weirdness that feels like conflict.  if you believe someone has an issue with you, you will behave differently towards that person. Here’s an example when I did exactly this.

Once I was working on a project with half a dozen people from around the world. Let’s say the other persons name was Len. In one of the early team meetings, I made a comment and Len immediately followed with a comment I thought was dismissive towards my contribution. I thought that was odd, but it was only one instance so I let it go.

During the next meeting, I again made a comment and Len immediately made a comment I again perceived as dismissive.  I thought ‘what is up with this guy?’ When the meeting ended, I emailed Len and said that I thought we needed book a time to talk.  He emailed his agreement. We booked time on a Thursday at noon. Len was in a different time zone hours ahead of me. I was on the west coast doing some work.  

As that Thursday noon approached, I was feeling very uncomfortable with addressing the perceived conflict. Nobody enjoys dealing with conflict. I initiated the call, feeling very awkward, so I asked him about the weather where he lives.  He then politely asked me about the weather where I was. Just a little avoidance.  Very awkward. 

Then I asserted “I get the impression that you’re upset with me.”

He responded “no, I thought you were upset with me.”

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. I responded somewhat confused and somewhat surprised with something like “oh, ok. I thought from your comments on the last couple of calls that you took issue with my suggestions or approach.”

He replied simply “no.” His tone indicated he was surprised by this. I guess he wasn’t aware that I thought he was ripping my comments.  

Then we talked about the project, next steps, and making some progress. We just got on with our work. Now many years later we sometimes do some work together. While he’s not a close friend, he is a friend.

Manufacturing Weirdness

When I reflect on this example what continues to amaze me is that in the period when we perceived conflict but had not confirmed conflict, we manufactured weirdness between us. If we had never sought to confirm that there was actual conflict, that weirdness would exist still.  Today I would be saying something like “I don’t know what it is but we were never comfortable with one another.  Odd. I wish I knew why, but it’s always been a difficult relationship”.

 

Assessing the Existence of Conflict

In my opinion, a key attribute of a professional is to test if there is conflict.  If conflict is perceived, you can try to confirm it exists, and if it does not, then you’ll take comfort in confirming that any weirdness was simply manufactured by the participants.

I provide some simple steps to test for conflict in this blog post https://gycz.blogspot.com/2022/02/dealing-with-team-conflict-real-and.html

Additionally I’m sharing a clip of a presentation I delivered in September 2018 in Taipei, Taiwan.  At the 18:00 minute mark during the question and answer period an attendee asked about dealing with conflict. 

https://youtu.be/FqHwNGgPojE